Developing Negatives
by FiveRoses
Summary: One-shot. Lisbon is in an irritable mood and Jane isn't exactly pouring oil on troubled waters.


_It feels like it's been ages since there was last an episode! I'm feeling a bit deprived_.

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Lisbon was rocking back in her chair in the peaceful solitude of her office, her mind grappling with the many threads making up their latest case. By now they should have been forming a recognizable pattern which would lead inexorably to the culprit, but instead they seemed to prefer to tangle themselves into a useless knot, and Lisbon was too impatient a person to enjoy untying knots.

She was so lost in thought that she didn't initially notice that Jane had propped himself against the doorframe and was watching her with interest. When she suddenly became aware of his presence, her body gave an involuntary jerk of surprise and for a long, terrifying moment it seemed as though she and her chair were going to teeter right over. Grabbing the edge of her desk, however, she managed to pull herself back to safety.

The adrenaline which had been released into her system, unmindful of the positive change of circumstances, faithfully proceeded to carry out its standard list of duties, speeding up her heart rate and diverting blood from unnecessary parts of her body (like her face and stomach) to the bits that might be needed in the event of a quick getaway, leaving her pale and a little queasy.

Jane, for his part, had also got a bit of a fright. Pictures of Lisbon hitting her head and doing herself a serious injury had immediately played out in his imagination (suitably garnished with copious amounts of blood) in that horrible moment before her chair returned to _terra firma_. Now that the crisis had passed, he swiftly weighed up his options – principally whether to show the genuine concern that he'd felt, or to make a joke and move on to other subjects – and concluded, as so many had before him, that discretion was the better part of valour. He wiped away his shocked expression (which she had been too preoccupied to notice) and replaced it with a grin. Priority number one, he decided, was to divert attention from the fact that he had been the one to startle her in the first place.

"Trying to liven up a dull day at the office, Lisbon? Didn't anyone ever teach you that you should never rock back in your chair?" He made a tsk-tsk noise for good measure. "I didn't even know it was possible to do that in a chair with wheels." In retrospect, he was a little impressed.

"Yes, well, that was my rebellious Lisbon struggling to get out," she responded dryly. "Is there something I can help you with, Jane?" She gave him a pointed look.

"Tricky case," Jane commented.

Lisbon just looked at him, her eyebrows ever so slightly raised.

"We seem to be swimming in contradictory facts."

They exchanged looks once more, but still Lisbon said nothing.

"I find that interesting," Jane added.

A further lull in the conversation made Lisbon give a little huff of impatience and mutter, "This is like pulling teeth," under her breath, but Jane heard her and grinned. He sat down in one of the chairs on the opposite side of her desk and crossed his legs.

"You're not doing much of a job holding up your end of the conversation," he told her with mock-reproach, by this time thoroughly enjoying himself. Sparring with Lisbon was so invigorating.

"If you have a point, then please get to it," Lisbon said, somewhat snappishly. Her heart-rate was still a little elevated and, worse, she was feeling very silly. No-one likes to look silly, of course, but it's worse in front of some people than it is in front of others. Jane was right at the top of Lisbon's list of people she least liked to embarrass herself in front of. It was bad enough when he metaphorically threw her off balance, but it was a bit much that he should have done it literally this time. She glared at him. Jane, realising that the blame for the whole incident had officially been laid at his doorstep, hurriedly got to the point.

"We need to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the evidence has been deliberately put there as a smoke screen."

Lisbon leaned forward in her chair. "How do we know which is which?"

"Intuition?" He knew that wouldn't go down especially well.

Lisbon made a face. "Great idea, Jane. I'm assuming it's your intuition that's going to throw out whichever bits of evidence don't suit you?"

"You know me so well, Lisbon." He smiled at her. She didn't smile back.

"I take it you don't have anything to tell me that I can actually use?"

Jane looked a bit offended. "I gave you a very useful and insightful observation, Lisbon," he said with dignity. "As soon as I have worked out a feasible plan to go with it, I'll let you know."

"I'll be waiting with bated breath."

Jane sauntered out, feeling under-appreciated. Honestly, if Lisbon wasn't always so dismissive, he'd be less inclined to come up with his more outlandish schemes to prove to her that he had been right all along. He lowered himself onto his couch feeling self-righteous and determined, as always, to prove himself right.

Lisbon went and made herself a cup of coffee as a restorative. She knew she had been in a particularly combative mood all day, and after a few sips of coffee, remorse set in. Jane was right about the probability that some of the evidence had been planted; she had been thinking along the same lines herself before he had so rudely disturbed her thoughts. This recollection brought with it another wave of annoyance and Lisbon had to admonish herself to stay focused on the task at hand. She headed into the bullpen.

"Guys." Three heads turned obediently in her direction. Jane cracked his eyes open slightly. "We need to go through everything we know again and figure out how much faith we have in each piece of information or evidence. If some of it was planted to confuse or distract us, we need to differentiate, as Jane puts it, the wheat from the chaff."

Jane hid his surprise. "Technically, it's the Bible that puts it like that, Lisbon. I merely borrowed the phrase for my own nefarious purposes."

Lisbon gave a low growl of irritation, but otherwise ignored him. She gathered her team around the conference table to start the brainstorming session. To her surprise and exasperation, it turned very heated very quickly, and Jane wasn't even one of the principal combatants. It seemed that as soon as the credentials of a piece of evidence were called into question, everyone's approach towards establishing truth was different. Jane didn't say much, but watched the arguments with great fascination. Lisbon felt like a referee. Rigsby, Van Pelt and Cho apparently disagreed on the probable genuineness of each and every item on the list. Frustrated, Lisbon turned on Jane.

"This is all your fault!" she accused.

Jane put on his most aggrieved expression. "I'm just sitting here!"

"This was your idea." Lisbon wasn't about to let him off the hook. "You knew this would happen."

Jane was rather pleased that Lisbon thought so highly of his skills, but this seemed to be an occasion when honesty would be the best policy.

"I did not!" he protested. "There must be a way of figuring this out. We're just approaching it wrong. What if we assume that all the evidence is false? It still tells a story; it's just a different kind of story. Each piece was chosen by the murderer and put there to lead us away from something else."

"Or they just dropped a bunch of random stuff to confuse the blazes out of us," Cho said, somewhat morosely. This case was getting on his nerves.

"I think not. That would have tipped us off too easily that the evidence had been planted," Jane said. "I think that this guy is too clever for his own good and that the evidence is like a negative of the truth. If we go north for every clue pointing south, we'll be heading in the right direction."

Lisbon was looking at him with slightly narrowed eyes. She thought his theory incredibly unlikely, but they didn't really have any alternative options to work with at present, and the idea did have a certain elegant symmetry to it that appealed to her.

"It's a bit of a stretch, but I suppose it's worth a shot, since we seem to have hit a dead end otherwise."

"Gee, thanks for the enthusiastic endorsement."

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes and her mouth gave the smallest of twitches of amusement, but it was enough to restore all of Jane's good humour.

He enthusiastically set about sketching out his "positive" from the negative evidence, and the others were soon drawn into the exercise. It took a lot of back-tracking and theorising (which resulted in a fair bit of arguing), but was undeniably intriguing and the end result was unexpectedly informative. In fact, it pointed rather simply to one not terribly obvious suspect. Even Jane didn't bother to hide the fact that he was surprised. Lisbon stood up rather reluctantly.

"I suppose we'd better bring him in for questioning then. Cho, you're with me. Van Pelt, Rigsby dig up everything you can on this guy and check his alibi again to see if we missed anything. Jane, you can go back and sleep on the couch."

Jane didn't like that idea at all.

"I'll come with you, if that's okay, Lisbon. I completely overlooked this guy and I want to know how he did that."

She cocked her head on one side. "Maybe he was being the negative of himself so that we'd completely miss the real thing," she suggested.

Jane liked this idea. "Let's go and develop the negative, then." He grinned at her.

Lisbon thought that sounded ominously like trouble waiting to happen, but sighed and let him follow her out of the CBI and into her car. To her relief, however, the whole arrest and confession process was extremely easy and anti-climactic. Their suspect was a little nondescript man, so self-effacing that he seemed to almost blend into the environment like a chameleon. He reminded Lisbon of those 3-D images that at first glance look like a colourful mass of dots, but when you really concentrate and unfocus your eyes, suddenly the 3-D image pops out at you. Invisibility was his strength, and as soon as he realised he'd been caught, he gave up without a fight. Jane seemed disappointed, as though he'd hoped for a worthier opponent. He retired despondently to his couch. The bullpen was quiet and empty, all the agents being occupied usefully elsewhere. Lisbon, pausing on her way to her office, gave the couch a gentle kick. Jane looked up at her.

"Nice work today." She smiled at him and, without waiting for a reply, continued on her way.

Jane closed his eyes again. He didn't bother to smile, because there was no-one around to see it, but inside he was giving one of those big, genuine, heartfelt smiles that makes the corners of your eyes crinkle and makes everyone around you smile back. It was good to be appreciated. Everyone likes to be appreciated, of course, but some people's appreciation matters more than others. Lisbon was right at the top of Jane's list of people whose appreciation he wanted to win. And it was an extremely short list.


End file.
